Danaher and his coauthor, Carnegie Mellon professor Michael D. Smith, examined the shutdown of the popular Megaupload site, which had allegedly served as a major conduit for pirated content before being closed by the U.S. Department of Justice in January 2012. The researchers analyzed digital sales and rentals for two movie studios across 12 countries, over the course of 18 weeks following the shutdown. Their findings suggest that digital revenues for the two studios were 6 percent to 10 percent higher than they would have been if not for the shutdown.

The study contributes valuable data to the debate over how copyright policy should be enforced in the digital era, providing evidence that anti-piracy interventions like the Megaupload shutdown can lead to a growth in legal sales.